Outrageous perversion of justice

-Sudheendra Kulkarni

‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ is an aphorism most of us learnt in our school days. “Tarikh pe tarikh” (‘date after date’) is a synonymous but more colloquial axiom familiar to all harassed and frustrated citizens seeking justice in India’s courts, which postpone case hearings habitually and almost interminably.

The judicial system of our country is globally notorious for delay in justice delivery. According to official data (March 2022), 47 million cases are pending in the country’s courts — 70,154 in the Supreme Court, 5.89 million cases in 25 high courts, and the remaining in lower courts. Of them, 10 million cases are pending for over five years, and 76 percent of the country’s prisoners are unconvicted undertrials awaiting adjudication of their cases. In April, a court in Bihar acquitted a murder case accused after he had spent 28 years in jail. In May, another citizen was acquitted in a murder case by a Madhya Pradesh court after suffering wrongful incarceration for 13 years. These facts and figures make a mockery of our criminal justice system. It would be neither inaccurate nor inappropriate to call it a justice system that is criminal.

But the recent outcome of Bilkis Bano’s case in Gujarat is an altogether more hideous injustice. It is perversion of justice in a case involving two heinous crimes committed simultaneously — gang-rape and multiple murders.